“Yes, I’d like it if we were,” she agreed.
“Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you keep ordering me out of your presence.”
Maybe she did owe him a bit of honesty now. “I didn’t know why at first,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
He nodded. “And now?”
“And now…I don’t like the way I feel when I’m around you,” she explained.
He looked over at her. “You don’t like it?”
“I don’t trust it,” she amended.
“A crucial difference.”
It was her turn to shrug.
The wind blew fiercely. Edwina shivered. It was chilly. She found herself wishing that the Duke would put his arm around her and pull her into the warmth of his body. She was sure that he would be warm.
How could she want that?
But this was exactly what she meant by not trusting the way she felt around him.
“I’ve been the unattainable spinster for so long,” she said softly. “I’ve known myself by that identity. It’s how I’ve made sense of who I am. And one thing I’ve always felt certain of is that I would never be so enthralled by any man, the way I’ve seen other young ladies get, that I would allow myself to get lost in his charms.”
“Did something happen between yourself and Lord Kentrow?”
She stared at him. Did he truly think she was talking about Lord Kentrow right now? No one could have been further from her mind.
He seemed to sense that she was shocked—or perhaps it showed on her face. “I worried when he brought you out here,” he explained. “I didn’t know what his intentions might be. Or rather—I knew that he had led you to believe that he was considering a proposal because you told me that was the case…”
“You thought I might be wrong?”
“I couldn’t be sure. And when a man takes a young lady outside alone…”
“Outside alone the way the two of us are right now, you mean?”
“I know my own intentions are honorable,” the Duke argued. “I don’t know what his intentions were.”
“Your intentions have never been honorable,” Edwina said. “You have always seen me as a game for you to win.”
The Duke didn’t respond to that. Perhaps he understood that she was speaking the truth.
“Lord Kentrow did make me an offer of marriage,” Edwina murmured.
The Duke jerked around to look at her.
She could see the whites of his eyes in the moonlight. She had never seen him look so disturbed in all the time she had known him.
Was it really so awful to him, the thought that someone might have asked her for her hand? And if it was…what was his reason?
She didn’t know what to think. Matthew had told her plainly that the Duke would never feel anything for her, and she thought he was right. She understood the Duke well enough to know what he wanted from their relationship. Besides, he had been very honest about that much. He was looking for someone to be his duchess, someone who fit his ideal of perfection, and he would never see her as that person.
She didn’t even see herself that way. She didn’t wish to marry. At least, she never had.
So why did he care if Lord Kentrow had proposed? Why were his fists clenching the side of the wall as if he hoped to crumble the stone to bits in his hands?
“What did you say to him?” the Duke asked, his voice sharp and tight.
